I have an annoyance building up inside me that I feel is going to culminate in me getting out of my car and whacking someone. I speak of people crossing the road in gay abandon. It’s beyond the ‘baap ka bageecha’ concept. It’s more like their father bought all of Bombay and then said — beta, yeh ley, SV Road poora tere liye.
People, including me, have run across roads from time immemorial. But I notice an increasing aggression in road crossing behavior. It’s like pedestrians have their own form of road rage. Nobody has right of way besides them, except possibly a truck bearing down the road at 50 kmph.
If some driver does happen to use the road at the same time this fellow wants to cross it, because of some illogical reason like the signal is green or the fact that he can’t really drive on the footpath, the crosser is liable to get quite upset.
From years of observation, I have divided jaywalkers into a few categories, please help me decide which is the most annoying.
The gigglers: Usually women, but occasionally some pansy men too. They run across the road at the last minute, say just when the signal for cars turns green.
Ten cars will honk at them to get out of the way but they will keep running till they get to the other side of the road and then laugh.
It’s one of those — we broke the rules and got away with it, all these people are fools — kind of laughs. Not only have they blocked your path, they’re also laughing while they do it.
If they don’t make it across and they have to retreat back they will laugh sheepishly.
The Handraisers: Any road, at any point, irrespective of speed of traffic, these are the guys who stick their hands out in a stop sign and cross the road, expecting traffic to come to a grinding halt before them.
That’s usually what traffic has to do because the other alternative is to run over the guy, which is starting to look like not such a bad option after all.
Look London, cross Tokyo (LLCT): I’m not sure whether this lot are daredevils, just plain dumb or have brain co-ordination problems.
They will walk onto the road, look in the opposite direction from where the traffic is coming, obviously see nothing and happily cross, oblivious to the guy who is breaking madly to avoid him.
Even better, sometimes the LLCT in question will look right and cross, get to the middle of the road, continue looking right instead of left for some unknown reason and create a mess on the other side of the road.
Group leaders: These are the guys who consider themselves responsible for the entire crowd at a junction being able to cross, irrespective of whether the walking light is green or not.
This joker will step into any small gap in the flow of cars, stop traffic and have people flow into the breach behind him. So, even while your signal is green, you are at a standstill because a hundred people are crossing in front of you.
Slow downers: This rarely happens but I have been witness to it. For them, crossing is a game. They will get close to the divider in the middle of the road, this effectively means they are in the fast lane.
Then they will purposely slow down, trying to get the car in front of them to break. If it does, they’ve won their silly game, if the car shows no sign of slowing then they can quickly hop onto the divider. One of these days, they’re going to lose that game, and badly.
The march past gang and the Solo saunterers: These types are not actually road crossers but a menace to traffic nonetheless, so perhaps they deserve a mention.
The march past gang are a group of people, perhaps four or five, who will walk shoulder to shoulder in a straight line that extends well into the road. They would end up blocking at least half a side street or at least one lane of a main road.
They are so lost in their own world, chatting away, that you would have to get right behind them, brake, honk a couple of times before you even get their attention.
Actual moving out of the way takes some more time, meanwhile other cars are busy honking at you thinking you’re the one who has blocked traffic.
The solo saunterers are the ones who, even while walking alone, cannot bring themselves to walk on the side of the road.
He will walk in such a way that at least one, preferably two lanes of traffic have to halt for our hero to realise he is walking in the middle of the road and grudgingly move to the side.
This is only temporary, at the next opportunity he will, like a science experiment gone wrong, gravitate to the centre again.
I wonder sometimes if these people were never taught as kids how to walk on the side of the road. Perhaps they had particularly sadistic parents who told them that it was fine to play in traffic.
They survived the playing in traffic during childhood somehow but never got out of the habit of walking in the middle of the road.